The street was choked full of spawnlings when they left the house. A few unfortunate souls had attempted to escape the safety of their homes and were now being devoured by the creatures.

Kiren and Lace ducked back inside and used the distraction of the monsters’ feast to sneak out the back door. Kiren struggled to keep his strained grunts to a minimum as they moved from house to house, alley to alley, while he carried a man on his back.

A rather stinky one, too. He reeked of alcohol.

They encountered two spawnlings at the mouth of an alley. Lace dispatched them with a few practiced flicks of her staff. The Beasts didn’t die from the attacks. They writhed weakly on the paved ground, but they didn’t have the time to finish them off, and so simply gave them a wide berth as they walked past.

You’re not allowed to die on us, Kiren thought. He hiked the old man higher. Not yet.

As they rushed through the South Side district, they got a good look at just how dire the situation had gotten. Kiren counted corpses in the hundreds, and there wasn’t a street they passed that didn’t have spawnlings stalking them, hunting for anyone still living.

When they got close to the Lodge, they headed inside an expensive four-story mansion—which had already been broken into—in order to survey a good point of approach.

All the members of the household had been killed, their bodies dismembered and gnawed at. The house was quiet, however, so it seemed that the Beasts that had killed them had moved on.

Kiren and Lace ascended to the top floor. The windows allowed them a good vantage point of the surrounding streets. Kiren put Excelerate down in a bed to take the weight off his shoulders.

Just in view, to the north, was the Lodge.

Distant explosions lit up the darkened field around the crown of bobbing lights that denoted the Lodge. Around the wall, as far as they could see, Beasts writhed in the hundreds, maybe even thousands—it was difficult to tell.

“Damn,” Kiren said. “Looks like we missed our window.”

“What do we do?” Lace asked. “We can’t fight our way through all those Beasts.”

“I don’t think we have a choice. We could go around, I suppose, and see if there’s any way in from the north, but that would take a good while, and this old boy isn’t doing so well.”

Lace sighed. “I guess we’ve just got to count on Tommyn and Haden pulling through when it counts.” She played with a glass vial containing red powder dye. “Let’s hope they see the signal.”

Kiren grunted in agreement.

There was no use waiting around. They left the building and headed for the Lodge. It felt wrong, walking straight towards a horde of Beasts like none Kiren had ever heard of, but he set his jaw and kept moving.

“You sure you can handle this?” Kiren asked as he lugged the limp Hero on his shoulders. He glanced over at Lace, who walked with quiet determination in her step. “I’m relying on you to make sure we don’t get overwhelmed.”

Lace gave a nervous smile. “I’ll do my best.”

That did very little to assure him.

By the time the wall was in sight, the spawnlings had already spotted them and were throwing themselves their way. There were dozens of the ugly, misshapen things, funneled into the thinner street.

Lace sent up a powder blast high into the air using her staff, producing a cloud of slowly drifting red paint. It was hard to make out against the night sky, but it was better than nothing at all.

The spawnlings came in fast. Kiren focused only on moving forward and tried to block out everything else. He tried to ignore their guttural cries, the skittering of their feet on the flagstones, their horrifyingly human faces, all twisted in unearthly caricature.

It was not an easy task.

Lace let the ragged line of monsters draw close, too close for comfort, before she moved. She swept her staff in a wide, horizontal arc which separated heads from bodies and bodies from limbs. The soft, pliable forms of the spawnlings were easy to dismember with her Power.

A good handful of the spawnlings fell, convulsing uselessly, but more poured over them towards the two apprentices, seemingly only enraged by the act of defiance.

Lace blew a strong wind that threatened to knock Kiren off his feet, and did just that for the spawnlings. They were thrown away, and Lace used the extra space to finish off a few spawnlings close to her, as well as advance with Kiren a few steps.

It soon became a bloodbath, Lace hacking left and right. Kiren kicked at the spawnlings where he could, but without his greatsword and the use of his hands, there was little he could do.

He spared a glance over at Lace amidst the screaming chaos.

She moved with grace and ferocity—every step a necessity, every movement certain.

She was beautiful when she worked. Even with the literal incarnation of death all around him, he could still appreciate that.

But there were too many of them, he quickly realized. There were spawnlings coming not only from the wall, but from behind them, as well.

They were being surrounded.

“Motherfucker,” Kiren swore.

He set Excelerate down on the ground and pulled his greatsword out of its scabbard. He threw the scabbard at a pair of spawnlings, setting them back a couple steps, and settled into a defensive guard.

“Bring it on!” he shouted, and swung his sword at the encroaching monsters.

They were eager to oblige.

*****

Something was wrong.

Lace kept trying to call the specter to her side as she fought, but it would not come. She recalled its warning to her and cursed inwardly.

There were simply too many of them. She could hardly tell what she was swinging at anymore, just a tide of blood and gore and grasping hands all around her.

Even with Kiren helping, bisecting Beasts with brutal swings of his greatsword, there was no telling how long they would be able to hold up.

Kiren was fully surrounded, standing guard over Excelerate. While he dealt with one group of spawnlings, a few of the creatures leapt on his back.

Lace fired an aero-shot his way and managed to knock two of the spawnlings off of him, but there were still two left.

He thrashed and dropped his sword as they tore at his clothes and ripped open his skin. He attempted to pull them off but they clung to him like oversized ticks, sinking sharp teeth and hooked claws into his flesh.

Lace was running low on energy, but she gathered all the air she could from the space above her head and directed it into a blast right at her feet. All the spawnlings around her were knocked away, giving her a few meters of clear space to work with, but she was left panting, using her staff for support to remain upright.

She staggered towards Kiren, who was being pulled to the ground.

Where are they? We need them, right now, or it’ll be too late.

A fiery explosion went off just a few meters to her left. It tore cobbles into the air and shredded a handful Beasts.

Another detonated just seconds after, killing another four or five of the creatures. The spawnlings shrieked at the sudden bouts of fire, and their trepidation gave Lace enough of a window to cut her way through to Kiren. She managed to get all the spawnlings off him, and he rose slowly with a trembling, yet grateful smile. Blood ran down his face in steady streams from cuts on his cheeks and scalp.

A big boulder of a man leapt off the wall with a thunderous warcry, crushing several spawnlings under his feet when he landed.

Haden.

He smacked the monsters around with his bare fists. One of them tried to leap on top of him, and he simply grabbed it out of the air. He spun in a full circle, using the spawnling as a club to knock away its compatriots before heaving it away.

Gantho stood atop the wall, his dirty shock of hair backlit against the warm lights flowing from the Guild Hall. He fired explosives into the seemingly endless horde of Beasts with his slingshot. A flock of birds gathered overhead, dropping stones onto the monsters that exploded into brilliant sparks.

Before long, a path had opened up all the way to the wall, with Haden making sure none of the spawnlings blocked it again.

“Come on, then!” Haden called with a brilliant smile. “We’ve paved the way for you!”

Lace helped Kiren pick Excelerate back up. Her bruised ribs were hurting, and her lungs ached with the strain she had placed upon her Power, but together they staggered the last few meters towards the wall.

“I’ll take that off your hands,” Haden said. He lifted Excelerate up and lumped him over one shoulder like a sack of flour. “Good work, guys.”

When they got close to the stone barrier, a ladder made of intersecting chains rolled down the side, attached to the top. Kiren went up first, as he was the most hurt, while Lace and Haden held off the encroaching Beast horde.

They seemed to have been whipped into a frenzy by the increased resistance and scalding flames. Shrieking, they threw themselves against the apprentices.

Once Kiren was up on the wall, Haden threw Excelerate up there. Kiren, Gantho and Veera caught him, and Lace began to climb while Haden stayed below.

Lace clung to the glowing chains as she climbed like her final lifeline. She made it over the top and rolled panting onto the safety of the solid stone wall.

“Okay, one man left!” Gantho said and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “Tommyn, let’s go for a big one! have your friends drop their payloads on my mark!”

Tommyn nodded, and Gantho readied another stone in his slingshot.

“Mark!”

A cacophony of booming thunder followed, and the sky was temporarily lit with fiery brilliance.

A few moments later Haden made it over the top of the wall, arms raked with bloody wounds. His hair hung loose over his shoulder, doused with sweat. And yet, he was grinning like a fool.

“A little close for comfort, wouldn’t you say?” Haden said with a hearty laugh while Tommyn checked on his injuries.

“You guys are fucking out of your minds,” Veera said. She ran a hand through her black hair, shaved on one side, and shook her head. “I’d never do anything half that dangerous. Don’t get me wrong, by the way—that’s not a compliment.”

Lace struggled to stand, surrounded by the other apprentices. Haden helped her back on her feet.

“You all came to help,” she said, out of breath.

Veera shrugged. “Guess so.”

“We make a pretty good team, huh?” Gantho said with a precocious grin.

“W-What about Excelerate, though?” Tommyn asked. “Is he…?”

“He’s alive,” Kiren said. “We’ve just got to get him to Good Doctor so she can fix him up. I don't think he's in the clear just yet.”